With the new year already here, many of us want to make changes to our lives.  Many of us have resolutions or goals that we want to accomplish in 2012 and most of the time, these goals require us to make changes.  These changes can be simple such as spending five minutes a day stretching or big changes like spending less money.The one thing that many experts talk about and try to tell us is that change is easy.  If you want to do “this” all you have to do is change “that” is something that I often here from many of the self help and motivational writers and speakers.  It sounds so easy, this thing called change but if it is that easy why isn’t everyone happy with everything in their life and able to make positive changes in an instant.The secret that no one tells us about change is that making a lasting, positive and valuable change to our life is hard. Making change requires hard work, determination and sacrifice if it is going to have a lasting impact and be of any value on our life.

For example, many people want to reduce their weight by 10 pounds for the new year but they do not understand the amount of change it requires them to make if they haven’t done it in the past.

1.  We have to believe that the change we are making is for the better and that we will benefit from it or we will not do it.  If we do not want to make the change in the first place, no matter how many good reasons we have, it won’t happen.  Focusing on the end results and not the changes that have to be made can go a long way and make this much easier.

2.  We must be willing to give up some things and realize that we are gaining something by making the change.  For example, instead of spending an hour laying on the couch watching television or playing CityVille on Facebook we can go for a walk or go to the gym and workout.  We have to understand that some things we do now make us feel good in this moment but the change will make us feel better.

Doing the workout at the gym or taking that walk might not feel good at the time but seeing the scale read 10 pounds less, having your belt notch smaller or fitting in to clothes that you haven’t worn in years could be the good feeling you are seeking.

3.  Recognize when you have made the change and give yourself a pat on the back for making it.  We all want to feel good and that we have accomplished something but we also need to recognize it and realize that because of this change we feel better and if can make one change, more positive changes are possible.

Changes are hard to make but looking at the end result will make the hard work worth while.  So now you know the secret of change.  Go make that change!

Like many of you, I spend a great deal of time reading on the Internet.  I subscribe to over 100 different blog feeds and even though I do not check all of them every day, there are at least 10 that I look forward to checking every day.

One of those 10 and one of my favorite blogs is called Wake Up Cloud.  I consider this more of a motivational blog than a business blog because the owner, Henri Junttila, always seems to say something that makes me take action.  It’s really funny how someone that I never met in person can make me get off my butt and do something that someone else has told me in the past.

I cannot put my finger on it but there is something about him that feels real.  I don’t feel that he is putting on a front to please everyone and I would guess that if he and I went to dinner one night, I would feel as if I already knew him.  I think we could talk without all the awkward “meeting new people” moments that I often have when meeting someone for the first time.

Having that type of power over me really impresses me.  I can count on my two hands how many people can make me take action on something and here is a person that I know, only from reading his blog, that can make me do it.

How can this be?

I think I figured it out, after reading post of his from yesterday.  You should read it too!  The post is titled Renaissance Guide to Business and about two thirds of the way down the page Henri, talks about “Putting yourself out there.”

This really struck a cord with me.  I often try to write articles and posts that appeal to everyone and after looking over them and thinking about it they are really boring.  Who wants to read boring dribble that makes me want to crawl under my desk and sleep for the next ten years.  Based on the amount of followers, all one or two of them, I must be on to something.  There is not much excitement and it certainly is not the way I am in real life.  When I write posts about my Karate classes on ShotokanPlanet.org, people can see a lot of me in my words but there is still a curtain there that separates the real me from the written or typed me.

With that said, you are about the meet the real Doug Wojtczak. The real me likes to share with others and help them take something hard to understand and make it simple.  My grammar isn’t always perfect and every now and then, I go out to left field and make absolutely no sense to anyone including myself but that is the way I am in person too.  I make jokes out of almost everything, even things that I shouldn’t but that is just me.  One of my greatest passions is sharing and passing on what I have learned from others that shared that information with me.

I hope that in some small way I can use this blog to help others but I also know that some of you will like me and others won’t but as I often tell others, “it is what it is” and hopefully if you cannot find what you are looking for here, you will find it somewhere else.

Who wants to join me and let the world know the real you?  Leave a comment and let me know if you are you.

Don’t focus on the goal, focus on how you are going to reach it.For a long time now, I noticed that I still have many of the same goals that I had in the past and I am not much closer to completing them from when I created them.  I created these awesome goals, put them down on paper and read them over and over again but I am not anywhere near reaching them.

I would like to think that I am not a lazy person because I do work hard but I think I might have stumbled upon my problem here.   I am spending too much time focusing on the goal and not on what needs to be done to reach the goal.  I have this wonderful goal without having any plan on how to get there.

Picture yourself standing at the base of a mountain looking at the top.  You tell yourself that your goal is to climb all the way to the top of that mountain but you have never climbed anything much higher than a hill at the local park before.  As you are standing there looking at the top, you keep thinking this is an awesome goal and when I do climb it, I will be on top of the world.

You have your goal right in front of you and you now begin to climb the mountain and suddenly realize that you do not know how to climb a mountain.  But you believe in your goal and if you believe in your goal and that you can accomplish it, you will reach your goal, right?  It is as if we are waiting for a magic to pick us up and take us to the top of that mountain all because we have a goal and we believe in it.

The part that many people, me included, do not think of or is told by other is what it takes to reach that goal.  We often sit around thinking if we have a goal that we truly believe in, it will come to us.  After reading many successful and not so successful stories, I have found that the people who reached their goals came up with a plan or outline shortly after setting their goal.  This sounds really simple but many people that I talk to do not have a clue on how to reach their goals and all they have are goals.

Lets go back to the mountain again.  Are you wearing the proper clothes, do you have the right shoes or boots, do you have ropes and other climbing gear, are you prepared for the thin air and colder temperatures at the top of the mountain?  These are just some of the questions or issues that could arise as your are climbing.

Goals are great to have and everyone should have incredible, life changing and fulfilling goals but without a plan on how to reach them, they are nothing more than goals.

Lately, I have been fighting with myself.  For many months, I tried my best to be positive.  Even when bad things happened, I tried to put a positive spin on it and told myself that it would be alright in the end.  The problem was, the more that I told myself everything would be alright, something new came along to challenge me.  The people that I looked to for inspiration were feeling down and made their down feelings very clear in their writing.  If the people that told me to stay positive weren’t why should I be positive?Oddly, just the other day, I saw a jeep with an outside tire cover that said “Life is good.”  When I first saw it, I said to myself, “ya right” with a sarcastic tone in the little voice in my head.  Today, I saw either the same jeep or a different one but with the same outside tire cover.  For the rest of my drive, I was thinking about writing this post and how I was going to complain about life not being good.  I was going to title this post, “Life is good, NOT” but then something changed my mind.

I asked myself, is life not good or that bad?  I took a look at myself at that very moment in time and realized, I have a roof over my head, I have the best family in the world, my health is okay, I have a job and at this very second in time, life is good.

Being mindful of this very moment gives us a different perspective.  Put all your problems out of your mind, just for this moment, even a second and realize that, right now, life is good.  If you do this throughout the day, this feeling of life is good will add up and hopefully life will be good.

Do you feel that you are always in a hurry?  Do things in your life make you rush to your destination just to find out that your destination is not where you really wanted to be?In my neighborhood, the police have installed a device with a radar gun and a big screen that displays how fast you are driving your car.  I am guessing that they do this to make people realize that they are going too fast and that they should slow down.  When I was pulling out of my driveway this morning, I noticed that the display showed 12 miles per hour.  Even though my car was not moving and there were no other cars on the street, it still displayed 12 miles per hour.

The idea of that display showing 12 miles per hour and nothing around it moving made me realize that the world or at least my world is moving too fast.  From the time I got in to the car to the end of the driveway my mind was racing about the upcoming day.  Things, such as, what I had to do when I get to work, the meeting that I have before noon, the emails that I have to read and reply to, when will I have time for lunch, will I have time to gas up the car on the way home, will I have time to write a post for my blog and about 50 other things that we moving through my head at speeds even greater than 12 miles per hour.

That 12 mile per hour sign told me to SLOW DOWN, take a breath, live in the moment and realize that all the things that I have to do will be done when I get to them.  Doing those tasks in the driveway or on the way to work is not going to get them done any faster or make them any easier.

Telling myself to slow down made me realize what a great morning it was with the sun shinning bright and higher than normal temperatures.  Slowing down gave me time to listen to a funny story on the radio and see the trees changing color now that fall is approaching.  If I don’t slow down now, I will waste this time like I have wasted so much other time in the past.

Next time you are speeding to get somewhere, SLOW DOWN, take a look around and enjoy that moment because there might be something that you do not want to miss right there and right now.